This invention relates to an improved sheath package containing a sheath primarily designed to function as a sterile shield for clinical thermometers, but may be used with tongue depressors, probes, catheters and other instruments or tools which are required to be sterile when used.
While it is well known that the clinical thermometer used in taking body temperature readings should be in a state of sterility in order to avoid recontamination of the patient in subsequent readings, or contamination of another patient, it is not as well known among laymen that present practices in many hospitals and by many doctors in their private practices do not afford a sterile thermometer. The cross-contamination that can occur when the same thermometer is used on different patients is a constant hazard.
The shortcomings of this practice with regard to sterility of thermometers was well recognized by the medical profession which, while cognizant of the dangers of such practice, did not, until relatively recently, have available a practical and economical means of facilitating the use of a thermometer which is sterile at each use.
The inventions of U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,552,558; 3,732,975; 3,809,230; and 3,847,280, generally provide in a sterile expendable package a sterile disposable sheath for instruments such as clinical thermometers. The package is designed so that a thermometer can readily be inserted by anyone so that the thermometer enters directly into a transparent sheath which has previously been sterilized and maintained in a sterile condition within the package in those areas which come into contact with the body of a patient. The package can be stripped to expose the sterile sheath, whereupon the sheathed thermometer may be inserted into a body cavity, and a reading subsequently taken through the sheath. The sheath can then be discarded, or it may first be discarded, so that the reading can be taken directly from the thermometer.
The thermometer may then, for subsequent use, be inserted into a new package and sheath without the necessity of sterilizing the thermometer itself after each use. This results in a substantial saving of time in the handling of the thermometer, and in the saving of money for the materials and supplies heretofore used to sterilize such objects. The use of such a sterile package will also serve to reduce the total number of thermometers required to be available.
In copending application Ser. No. 550,000, there is disclosed a sheath package similar to those described above with a weakened line in the cover material of the package across substantially the entire width thereof near the mouth of the sheath so that as the cover material is stripped to expose the sheath, it can easily be separated along this weakened line to leave a portion of the cover material as a tab. This tab provides a convenient place to grasp the sheathed thermometer after the cover material has been stripped away in the handling of the sheathed thermometer incidental or necessary to temperature taking. However, in this handling of the sheathed thermometer, the cover material forming part of the tab sometimes comes loose and falls away leaving only an underlying very thin flexible thermoplastic material, from which the sheath is formed, to act as a means of grasping the sheathed thermometer. Because the thin flexible material is relatively slippery, the sheathed thermometer may be dropped and the thermometer broken when the tab consists only of the thin flexible sheath material. If the cover material should come off of the sheath material of the tab in rectal use, the thermometer is sometimes withdrawn without sufficient grasp upon the thin slippery flexible material forming the tab thus leaving the sheath still deposited within the rectal cavity.